(You keep making that face, Dan, and it’s going to stick. Still, at least it attracts attention away from your sideburns.)

It’s no secret that here at the Potato we’re big fans of the phenomenon known as Punch-Face. Just as no one looks cool sneezing, neither does anyone look cool when being punched in the face. Okay, maybePaul Newman, but that’s the one exception. Fortunately for us, the boys at Fight Magazine were in England for UFC 105 this weekend and they captured a whole slew of punch-faces for us to enjoy. Will we ever get sick of this? Maybe one day. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be today, though.

Before their Strikeforce title fight on CBS, Jake Shields and "Mayhem" Millerexchanged Twitter barbs that could accurately be described as good-natured ball-busting on both sides. Then they fought, Shields won the Strikeforce middleweight strap via decision, and that was that. Only recently the Twitter exchanges have gotten a little more personal and a lot less fun. Like two drunk guys horsing around at a party, the play-wrestling has turned into torn collars and breathless invectives right in front of our eyes, and the rest of us can only stand around uncomfortably while trying to decide whether to try and broker a peace or just make up an excuse to leave.

Miller kicked things off by writing, "Jake, the worst damage you did was give me staph, zit covered leg humper," which prompted Shields to post the above picture with his belt collection. Not one to let a situation cool down, Miller asked Shields if he "hugged" his way to those titles, which then made Shields retort with a remark about Miller’s arrest for assault, without mentioning that Miller was later acquitted of those charges. In short, Shields and Miller probably aren’t going to be carpooling to future Strikeforce events together, so the real loser in all this is the environment.

Thanks for nothing, Twitter. You’ve ruined another friendship that might have been by making mass communication so easy that it’s hardly even worth thinking through the possible ramifications beforehand. Something tells me they didn’t have this problem with the telegraph.

The Brock Lesnar illness saga seems to get more severe every time Dana White discusses it. This weekend the UFC president categorized it as "very serious," but not life-threatening. According to new quotes from DW on TMZ.com today, it’s serious enough that Lesnar’s career could possibly be in jeopardy. White apparently told TMZ that Lesnar has been hospitalized ever since he collapsed during what was supposed to be a relaxing trip to Canada last week, and he may now need "major surgery" to deal with an intestinal disorder. Again White ruled out cancer and HIV while saying that he couldn’t get specific about the problem, but any time you’re so sick that people will only say what diseases you don’t have, it’s not encouraging. As far as his future in the Octagon, White said, "There’s a possibility Lesnar will never fight again."

We hope that characterization is more accurate. At the moment, the only thing that seems to be clear is that Lesnar is sick. How sick, and for how long, is still in question. Just the same, thoughts, prayers, whatever it is that you do, now might be a good time for it. Feel better, big guy.

(Look, Dana isn’t saying that you guys have to hate each other; he’s just saying that he could understand why Thiago might be upset about some of the things Rashad may or may not have written about him on the Zuffa office’s bathroom wall.)

It’s the first rule of fight promoting, and the UFC knows it better than anyone: when life gives you staph infections, make staph infectionade. Only, you know, don’t call it that. After losing Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira off the UFC 108 card, and with him their main event feature attraction, the UFC has responded by pushing the Rashad Evans-Thiago Silva bout to the top spot and rebranding it a "grudge match." They don’t go into much detail to explain the grudge part of that phrase, but we can probably assume that they’re going to be using the old ‘you beat my teammate and now I must beat you’ angle.

As for Big Nog, he apologized to his fans but wisely noted "I have learned from my mistakes, and I’m not going into a fight unless I can give 100% my best performance." Nog is currently getting medical treatment in San Diego, according to the UFC, and we wish him a speedy recovery.

The data is in for UFC 105, and now the Potato Index’s arbitrary numerical rankings system is here to tell you who’s up and who’s down after this weekend’s UK action.

Randy Couture +25 It goes down as another win on his permanent record, but it just as easily could have gone the other way.He’s still great when it comes to executing a game plan, and any man who can bounce back from those kicks to the body is a tough S.O.B., but a methodical, debatable win over a mid-level 205’er doesn’t herald the dawning of a new age for Randy the light heavyweight.

Brandon Vera -21 As close as this fight was, Vera can’t complain.He spent most of the bout with his back on the fence, and when he finally put Couture in trouble he let him off the hook rather than trying to finish him off.Sorry, Truth.Looks like the middle of the pack is where you’re going to stay.

"My job is over the next 10 years, the same game of soccer that we play in the U.S. is the same game they play in Canada, Mexico, Spain Italy, France, etc., and that’s what we’re doing with mixed martial arts right now," White said. "Everywhere you go all over the world, it’s the same sport, and everybody plays by the same rules. We’re trying to get these television deals in all these countries, major TV deals exposing the fans to it, then you bring a live event to those places. Then the virus spreads and people start training at it, trying to make a living at it, eventually becoming professional athletes. That’s what we’re going to do over the next 10 years.

"How do we plug this whole thing in with television and how to watch it everywhere? We’re trying to figure that whole thing out and build that now. But the groundwork for this thing is ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ and we’ve been working it very hard, and we’re making it happen. ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ is going to be all over the world. That’s the goal."

By now, you probably know that Manny Pacquiao dominated Miguel Cotto on Saturday night en route to a 12th-round TKO victory, becoming the first boxer to win world titles in seven different weight classes, and solidifying his position as best pound-for-pound pugilist on the planet. Cotto was as game as advertised, and kept the contest competitive early on. But the knockdowns that Pacquiao scored in the third round (right hook) and fourth round (left uppercut) turned the tide of the fight for good, and Cotto spent most of the remainder of the match playing defense.

Cotto’s camp nearly threw in the towel after a demoralizing 11th frame, but the fight was allowed to continue to the last round, in which referee Kenny Bayless seized on the first opportunity to stop the fight; the official time was 0:55 of round 12. Immediately after the fight, the MGM Grand Garden Arena began to chant "We want Floyd!" Ah, but does Money Mayweather want Manny? The video is above; watch and be inspired.

(This is why you always wash your hands after handling Maxim photo shoot props. For all you know, Fergie might have touched them before you.)

If the strongest among us aren’t safe from disease, there can be little hope for the rest of us mere mortals. According to Dana White, Brock Lesnar is “not going to be fighting for a while” because his condition has worsened of late and doctors “don’t really know all that’s wrong with him.”Though DW said his condition wasn’t life-threatening, he added that Lesnar did have some other health issue in addition to mono, but declined to say exactly what it was, calling it “very serious.”Sounds like he wasn’t faking sick, after all.

Even giants get ill sometimes, so it shouldn’t be so frightening to hear that Lesnar is laid low, right?Normally, perhaps.But this comes near the end of an illness and injury-riddled year for the UFC, and things only seem to be getting worse.Former champ Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is also going through some rough times, and a resurgent staph infection has forced him to pull out of UFC 108 and will likely result in him being hospitalized. On its own, it might only be a personal struggle for Big Nog. But in light of Lesnar’s illness and other current trends, it is surely a harbinger of doom.

Last night’s UFC event in Manchester, England sure drew the locals out of their pubs, setting a new UFC record for attendance at a European event with 16,693 attendees for a live gate of more than $2 million. That means the UFC had plenty of spare cash for bonuses, and they gave out $40,000 bumps to Michael Bisping and Denis Kang (Fight of the Night), Terry Etim (Submission of the Night), and Denis Siver (KO of the Night). Etim was the easy choice, since he had the night’s only submission, but we would have thought that Andre Winner earned a KO bonus with the memory-eraser you see above. Siver’s must have been truly spectacular, or else the UFC is using him as part of a money laundering scheme. It’s definitely one of those two.

Of course, the decision that handed Randy Couture the win over Brandon Vera at UFC 105 is already being called "controversial," though it was such a close three-round fight that we’d probably be hearing the same gripes if it had gone the other way. Sure, Vera came the closest to finishing the fight, but that one burst of offense in the econd round was the most significant action of the fight. Aside from that, it was a lot of Couture pressing Vera up against the fence, stifling any attempts at offense. That’s never going to be easy to score or even all that satisfying to watch. One thing we can all agree on, though….